How to develop pure hatred for stargazer lilies

Since Mother's Day yesterday, I've been noticing stargazer lilies popping up. At Dooce.com, and at Cake Wrecks. There may be more lurking out there. I don't go to church, so I didn't see whether mothers still wear corsages on Mother's Day. But if you went, were some of the mothers wearing stargazer lilies? I have one poignant memory from my past involving stargazer lilies, and it's amazing how from the minute I knew the name of these flowers I had negative associations with them. The event? My first wedding.

I was young, 21. I was pregnant, 13 weeks on the wedding day itself. And I had planned a wedding from start to finish in three weeks. I think I would have been happy to just have had a small wedding, family and a few friends, very low key. But the two mothers in the situation, mine and my ex-husband's, both had their reasons for wanting it big. They wanted the full scale thing, no matter how shotgun the situation. So I went down to the David's Bridal outlet warehouse in Hollywood, Florida and picked out a gown that fit reasonably well and could be altered in less than a week. We had 500 invitations printed in lickety split time and sent them out. My family, our family friends, and my and my ex-husband's friends were 100. The other 400 went to my outlaws' pared down list of must-invites (the first list that they faxed contained well over 600 names and addresses). The church and the minister weren't a problem; my ex-father-in-law insisted on performing the ceremony. Bridesmaids' dresses were bought off the rack at Talbots and sent to the relevant sisters and sister-in-law-to-be. My mother arranged for a caterer to put together the details for a reception. I drove from Florida to Texas with my dad and arrived about a week before the wedding. During that week, I found a photographer, a bakery who could whip up a cake and deliver it that day, and a florist. And it was the florist who suggested stargazer lilies.

A classic, he said. They will complement anything, and remain fresh all day long, no matter how high the temperatures reach (over 100F that day, as it turned out). Since the only color being used in the wedding up to that point was green (from the bridesmaids' dresses and the roses on the cake to the decorative ribbons on the rice pouches and the personalized napkins on the tables), the brilliant deep pink of the lilies would add a touch of warmth to the setting. OK, then, stargazer lilies it is. Everywhere. Bridesmaids' bouquets, floral arrangements for the church, centerpieces for the hors d'oeuvres only reception, and the cake topper. I didn't even knew what they looked like before I committed.

My consistent thought during the whole planning process was, just get it over with. How bad can it be? I was task-oriented, dealing with checking items off a list, not worrying about whether the best choices were being made.

Well, the day of the wedding came. The green roses on the cake matched the green of the bridesmaids' dresses. The green was actually teal. Teal roses on the wedding cake. I wish I had pictures left to send to Cake Wrecks. What the hell is a teal rose? My dress had been altered three inches too short and I had to run out at the last minute to a discount shoe store and buy flats. The program for the ceremony was embarrassing; my mother-in-law-to-be who had typed the whole thing up on her laptop and delivered it to Kinko's had included titles for all the family members on her side, but neglected to ask if anyone on my side had titles other than "Mr and Mrs." In addition, she assumed that all married women went by their husband's last name only, of course. My oldest sister was not amused. And then there were the stargazer lilies.

The first of the lilies I saw was the bunch on top of the cake. From a distance they looked nice enough. But as I got closer, I realized, there's some strange smell in the air; what is that? Then came the bridesmaids' bouquets. Stargazer lilies. Dozens of them. They were beautiful, make no mistake. But they were smelly. Really, really smelly. And then I realized, I have chosen to surround myself and everyone I know with flowers that stink. What a lovely aura to create. It got worse, though.

I started sneezing. Yes, that's right, me, the girl who's had allergies and asthma her whole life ordered several hundred, maybe even over a thousand, dollars in flowers, without ever considering whether I might be bothered by their aroma. Or whether they might bother my very allergic mother as well.

Those lilies started looking like big pink spiders to me, crawling out from every crevice, waiting to suck the life out of anything foolish enough to come close. They were deceptively cutesy, what with their pink glow and yellow speckling. But don't you be fooled; these were creatures spawned by the devil himself.

I spent the day red-nosed with a handkerchief in my hand, sneezing every few minutes and trying to ignore the pervasive, stinky, stargazer lily aroma in between nose snorts. When we were outside, the aroma got even stronger, making me almost nauseous. Was it not enough that it was over 100 degrees F, I was in a synthetic floor-length gown, and I was PREGNANT? No, I had to add some horrible scent that I was also allergic to.

Needless to say, I was relieved when, 8 years later, I had a reason to purge my possessions of any sign that the day had ever even taken place. Every picture, every memoir, every gift list, every keepsake, every bit of it went in the trash.

I'm sorry if you are a person who loves stargazer lilies and finds them the most wonderful flower in the entire world. Because I will never, ever, ever enjoy even a photograph of a stargazer lily, much less approach a live one in real life.

As for the rest of the story, for my second wedding, I visited five florists before I chose one. We only needed a bouquet for myself and Grace and four small women's corsages, still, I wanted to make sure it was right. When I finally found the man who designed my bouquet, I knew I had hit the jackpot. Here's what he designed:




Orange tulips surrounded by yellow calla lilies with a hint of a burnt orange/brown edging, all tied up with an orange organza ribbon. Perfect, simple, brilliant.

GORGEOUS.